A Tale of Two Brothers
by Carol
Summary: Kevin and Darien as told from Claire's diary


Devil's Silver---A Tale of Two Brothers

Devil's Silver---A Tale of Two Brothers

By Carol M.

Rating: PG

Spoilers: Catevari, Ralph, Tiresias, Flowers for Hobbes, To Sleep Perchance to Dream, Impetus, Brother's Keeper, the Pilot

Disclaimer: I don't own them, I only love them

Summary: The events of the last year as told from Claire's diary

Devil Silver Series: Devil's Silver, Gilligan and Mrs. Howell, Follow the Breadcrumbs, Brother to Brother

Author's Note: This basically has Claire telling her perspective on things that have happened in various episodes and things that have happened in the Devil's Silver series. I have figured that the Devil' Silver series takes place sometime after Brother's Keeper. At some point I will revamp some of the older stories to figure in events that took place in Brother's Keeper. 

This story is a little change of pace. I figured Darien needed a little rest and relaxation. I want to dedicate this story to Vincent Ventresca for creating a character that is so easy to fall in love with. Enjoy!

A Few Weeks After Brother to Brother

Claire looked over at Darien's sleeping form next to her on the bed and smiled. He snored lightly and occasionally muttered nonsensical words. He looked absolutely adorable when he slept. All of the brash smart-ass attitude was gone, replaced by the innocence of a little boy. She could watch him sleep for hours, taking joy in the steady rise and fall of his chest and the small line of drool that always seemed to leak out of the corner of his mouth.

Claire sat next to him with a newly purchased diary in her hands. Although keeping a diary was nothing new for her, this was the first time she was going to use one to record personal events and not detailed accounts of such things as LR 27's eating habits.

"Keepie," mumbled Darien softly in his sleep. Claire smiled again, leaning over and kissing him lightly on the cheek. He sighed slightly, but did not wake up. She had learned in the past few weeks that Darien was an extremely heavy sleeper and it would take something like an atomic bomb to wake him up.

She uncapped a fresh pen and began to record all of the events that had led up to this moment of her laying next to the man she loved, Darien Fawkes.

__

Dear Diary,

There once was a story about a girl who met her prince charming. I thought it was only a story,

until it happened to me.

You see, it took someone else to make me realize that my prince charming was right in front of me and that someone else was prince charming's brother, Kevin Fawkes. Kevin and I dated for about a year when we were both going to Caltech. He was the first love of my life. But you know how it is with us scientists, our passions for discovery comes first and the rest of our lives kind of flounder. When we graduated, I think we both knew that it was over. I never called him and he never called me. I must say that I never stopped loving him. But I figured that Kevin Fawkes was in the past and that's where he was going to stay. Boy, was I bloody wrong about that.

I got the phone call about a month after it happened. Kevin was dead, a D. O. D. colleague told me. I remember collapsing on the floor of my bathroom and sobbing for what seemed like days. I vowed at that moment that I would never love anyone ever again because it just hurt too much.

About a month later, I got a call from Charlie Borden himself. He offered to help me out with my little Gloria problem if I accepted a position at Fish and Game as the Keeper of some kind of top secret experiment. I decided to take a chance and said yes to the job.

I was in for the shock of my life that first day of the job. I entered the Keep and plopped down on the gynecologist's chair ready to read the Q-gland project file. I opened the folder and the first thing that greeted me was a picture of Kevin Fawkes. My heart leapt. I quickly scanned through the rest of the folder and found out exactly what had kept Kevin from calling in those post Caltech years. Then I saw the name of the gland carrier, Darien Fawkes.

Now Kevin had told me about Darien. He was a punk, a thief, basically a rotten apple. Rebellious, a smart-ass, a thug, everything that Kevin was not. But Kevin would also tell me about Darien's alter ego. Kevin was convinced that Darien could be more then he was, that there was some inner goodness in Darien that was just dying to get out. I guess that's why Kevin put the gland in him in the first place because he knew that Darien would do the right thing. I, on the other hand, was not at all looking forward to keeping Mr. Fawkes. I was an English female doctor and he was an American male ex-con. We were never going to get along.

The first time I met Darien he was decked out in a thief's disguise with an overabundance of stubble across his face. First impression? Darien was really cute. I mean I know that's really shallow, but I am a woman after all, and I am not blind. Kevin had been handsome in that intellectual way, but Darien is, well I guess hot is the word I'm looking for. Anyway, just I had predicted, we didn't get along. All he did was bitch and moan about the gland and about not wanting to working at the Agency. This was definitely going to be a long couple of years.

Claire looked over at Darien and stroked his hair. She shook her head slightly and smiled. Then she went back to writing.

__

Where was I? Oh right, not getting along with that little punk Darien. Okay, well I first discovered the good side of Darien about two weeks after I became his keeper. It was this case involving a little girl name Jessica Semplar. She was a witness to a murder, but wouldn't talk to anyone but her invisible friend, Ralph. Enter Darien. He stepped in and became that little girl's friend. And it wasn't just for the case. He really cared for her. After he got shot protecting her, all he wanted to do was get out of the Keep and go to the hospital to make sure she was okay. Bobby later told me that Darien had run away from Jessica when he had gone QSM because he was so terrified of hurting him. Then Darien had to say goodbye to her. I remember going to check on him after he had gone QSM and had been shot six times. He was sitting on a bench near the woods. I don't know how long he had been there. He tried to act like a smart-ass, calling me Dr. Jeckyll, but I saw something on his face that went deeper then being a punk. I saw loss. I asked him if he had gotten to say goodbye to Jessica and he said that it had happened the other way around, that she had said goodbye to him. Then he walked off into the woods. I realized that beneath his often cold and sarcastic exterior he had a real warmness inside him that couldn't help but escape sometimes. Kevin had been right.

Okay, so he had a heart, so what, doesn't everyone? Oh, who am I kidding, I was starting to like him at this point. Not romantically, but as a friend. He can be very charming when he wants to be and what woman could resist those eyes of his. But I'm sidetracking. The moment when I first saw Darien's inner struggle with the gland and realized that all of his bitching wasn't all about him was a case involving a psychic who convinced people to kill themselves. Darien started having nightmares around this time and was convinced that he was going to kill Hobbes. He came in looking tired and depressed and would ask for a shot and I would say no. Looking back now, I feel awful for doing that to him, but damn it I didn't want him to build up a resistance to the counteragent. As it turned out, Darien did try to kill Hobbes when he went QSM. Thank god I happened on their location with the counteragent in time.

The next day I marked him. I put his tattoo indicator on his arm. He asked "Why a snake?" How could I tell him that it was something his brother used to doodle on my course packets. That I was literally stabbing a piece of his brother into him, something that would be a part of him forever. He was miserable at this point. He said if he ever tried to kill someone again that he didn't want the counteragent, he wanted a bullet. Then he took Darien the rat home. I sat in the lab for hours after that, thinking about Darien. This guy wasn't bitching about actually having the gland in his head, this guy was bitching because he would go insane and hurt people if he didn't have the counteragent. He wasn't thinking of himself, he was thinking of everyone but himself. I respected him for that. I still do.

A few weeks later, my little Gloria problem was solved thanks in part to the criminal antics of Darien. Now I didn't have anything keeping me at the Agency. Darien figured I would get a job somewhere else. But how could I leave him? How could I let Kevin's brother be handled by some stranger? I couldn't. Darien needed me and I wasn't going to let him down. Besides, the whole Gloria situation had brought us closer. I had inadvertently let Darien see my human side. I guess he liked it.

Months went by, uneventful. Then, a man named Simon Cole invaded our lives, terrorizing all of us. Poor Darien. Poor me. We went back to the old lab to get some clues about Simon. Darien pointed out the place where Kevin had died. Do you know how badly I wanted to grab Darien and sob into his arms, to tell him that I missed his brother too. But I couldn't. That wouldn't be very professional of me would it?

After Simon Cole, I was in for the shock of my life. Darien thought Kevin was alive. I didn't believe it. I couldn't believe. I didn't want to set myself up to be hurt. But the evidence was so strong. I imagined all the things I would say to him if he was alive. Tell him that I loved him and I regretted breaking apart from him. But of course, it turned out to be Arnaud messing with Darien's mind. Darien had set himself up for a fall and indeed, he plummeted to the ground with grief. I could see it in his eyes for weeks. Finally, I decided to screw the doctor patient relationship and I asked Darien to lunch. He said he had other things to do, but that he wanted a rain check. That was good enough for me.

Claire smiled at the memory of taking Darien to lunch a few weeks later. She had taken him to a pretty fancy place and Darien looked so adorably uncomfortable. Still the conversation had been good and she had thought at the time that Darien was really starting to like her, at least as a friend.

__

Now I have to mention something about the women in Darien's life. You see, they all leave him in the end. Casey, Jessica, Kate, Leila, Allianora, one way or another, they all leave him. But damn if they didn't make me jealous while they were in his life. Allianora was the worst. I remember the case where he had the nanobugs in his system and I had to ask him how he got them. Sex. Sex with Allianora. Why did I care? I mean I'm his doctor and that's it. But I was so jealous. Thinking of him with her. Wanting it to be me. I remember wondering where these feelings were coming from. At the time, I chocked it up to lust, a phase that would pass. I was wrong.

You know how when you like someone, you read things into everything they do. Well that's what I started doing. I kept a mental tally of every nice thing Darien had ever done for me. Being extremely protective of me when we thought Simon Cole was after me. Feeding me yogurt while I was strapped to that damn chair after the sleep clinic incident. Telling me that I was smart enough to help Hobbes after he got injected with the Nobel Prize winning sperm. Pushing me out of the way when the invisible Sasquatch was getting close to me.

I clung on to these moments, hoping they meant something. That is one thing I have learned about Darien. He communicates by action, not by words. I realized this after he injected himself with the retrovirus to save Hobbes. He risked his life for his partner. I think that said it all. Darien will probably never out and out tell Bobby how much he cares for him. But I know that Darien loves Hobbes. Maybe even more then he loved Kevin. I can only thank god that Bobby feels the same way about Darien. Darien needs people to care about him because so few have.

A rush of memories started to flow through Claire. The incident that had changed it all for her was when they had brought Kevin back in Darien's body. A tear slid down her face as she got ready to relive those emotional couple of days_._

Well diary, you know how they say that one event can change the course of your entire life. Well the event that changed my life involved injecting Kevin's memory RNA into Darien so we could get the gland out. I was against It, of course. First and foremost, what if it killed Darien? Secondly, if it actually worked, how was I going to deal with Kevin? What was I going to say to him?

Leave it to Darien to stand in the pouring rain with his puppy dog eyes piercing through me. That's all it took to convince me. So we did it. Darien became Kevin. Kevin was exactly the same. God I had missed him. All those old feelings came rushing to the surface. And then he kissed me. It was at that moment that I realized how much I cared for Darien. It was Kevin kissing me, but it was Darien that I was kissing. Darien's hair, his lips, his stubble, his scent, his breath. It felt so right, yet so wrong at the same time. I had to pull away. 

Kevin made me realize that I didn't love him anymore. Well, maybe that's not true. I will always love Kevin. But at the moment, I realized that I was in love with Darien. After the kiss, we brought Darien back. He said something about Kevin being selfish and I reacted by slapping him. Damn him. Didn't he know what I was going through? That I had just kissed him, discovering my feelings for him, while his mind had been in sleep mode. And what about Kevin. I mean I had just hurt Kevin by pulling away from him. Men,, sometimes they just don't understand the turmoil that us women go through.

But I digress. Kevin figured out a way to take the gland out. We put him in Lab 4 to write out the steps. Then he killed himself without telling me how to take the gland out. I guess I understand why he did it. He thought it was best for Darien. He thought he was making him a better person. But what he didn't know was that Darien didn't need the gland to become a better person. He had done that all on his own.

I think what Kevin did broke Darien's heart. Darien had lost his brother for the third time. And Kevin had betrayed him, like so many other people had before. For weeks after, Darien wasn't himself. I could see bags under his eyes, tears that wanted to fall but couldn't. I think Kevin nearly broke him. But after a month, Darien was back. He never mentioned the incident again. I don't think he could. He needed to forget when Kevin had done to him. So I think he pretended that it never happened because it hurt him too much to deal with it.

What happened next was so awful, I don't know how much I can write.

Claire shivered. She was thinking about the day Darien had gone QSM and raped her.

__

It had been such a calm couple of days. Darien was acting more like himself. I was actually thinking of asking him out. Then, without warning, he came into the Keep and raped me. I almost lost myself that day. To feel hands on you, the hands of the man that you have come to like, maybe even love, to feel those hands violating you, is one of the most awful feelings I can think of. It was Darien's hands, Darien's body, but it wasn't Darien. It was a monster.

Bobby saved me that day. I will always be grateful for that.. He beat Darien until he passed out and threw him in the padded room. Darien awoke a few hours later, free of the QSM. I think if Kevin's betrayal had broken him, then raping me had killed him. I saw such terror and sorrow in his eyes. I felt downright sorry for him. But he had scared me too. I couldn't let go of that so easily.

A few weeks passed. One day Darien came in for his shot and we ended up getting stuck in the Keep. We talked about the rape. We worked it out. I could forgive him, but I don't think he could forgive himself.

But that day, something magical happened. As we sat in the Keep, bored to tears, we starting talking. I mean really talking. Then we started dancing. And then, well, we almost kissed. 

My heart leapt for joy that night. Could Darien, this gorgeous, sweet, tough, ex-con have feelings for me? Indeed he did.

My birthday was a few weeks later. Darien gave me a CD of the songs we had danced to in the Keep. I jumped for joy inside. Maybe this was happening. But leave it to Arnaud to spoil the fun. He kidnapped me and forced Darien to give him the quicksilver files. Being the night in shining armor that he is, Darien complied. He came to save me and got himself beaten up and shot in the process. 

Claire stopped writing and looked at Darien. She pulled down the blanket that was covering him, revealing his chest and stomach. All of the bruises from where he had been beaten were faded. But the scar from the bullet wound was still there. Claire took her finger and gently rubbed it, remembering how close she had come to losing him that day. That scar represented everything that Darien had trouble saying. That he loved her, that he would die to protect her. Claire picked up the pen and started to write.

__

But I got to admit it wasn't all bad. A few days later, in the hospital, we had our first kiss. A kiss between Darien and me, not Kevin and me, not QSM Darien and me, but Darien. Everything that I had wanted for so long came out in that kiss. It left me shaky and lightheaded. I can only hope it did the same thing to him.

But of course, things can never be simple for Darien. We couldn't just bask in the glow of our newfound closeness because the Agency was after him for taking the files. They were going to kill him if he didn't get them back. So Bobby and I helped him. Darien, in a very risky move, kidnapped Huiclos and lured Arnaud to us. Darien damn near killed both Arnaud and Huiclos, but we stopped him. Actually, he stopped himself. Darien is not a murderer and never will be.

A few days later, Darien went to visit his brother. I knew he would. So I went to the cemetery to be there when he needed me. I saw him standing over the grave, talking to him. Expressing regret about not knowing him, about the QSM, about the rape, about Arnaud. He didn't mention anything about Kevin's betrayal. I don't think he could. That would take away the one person that Darien could actually go and open up to, his brother. Without Kevin, whether dead or alive, Darien would be lost. He talked some more and then without warning, fell to the ground crying. That was my cue. I came up behind him and took him in my arms, holding him, letting him cry. He needed it, god did he need it. He had been through so much, with so few people to count on.

Then this amazing thing happened. He told me that he loved me. He loves me. Darien Fawkes loves me. I felt sheer joy at that statement. I told him that I loved him too. Then he took my hand and walked me out of the cemetery.

That night, after a great date filled with good food and dancing, we made love for the first time. Having slept with both of the Fawkes brothers gives me good grounds for comparison. Now I'm not talking penis size, I'm talking the actual act of making love. They are both wonderful lovers, but in different ways. Kevin was better at the sheer physicalness of sex, paying attention to technique and form, trying to get things right. Being scientific I guess. See that's the thing, Kevin had something besides me. He had science. Science would always be there for him. So I guess having someone to love was just an added bonus.

Darien does not have science. He doesn't have anything. All he has are people. His sex has a desperate, urgent quality to it. It's like he has to convince himself that I am here with him, that I will not leave him. He needs to show me how much he loves me and in turn, he needs to be shown how much he is loved, to be reassured constantly. I love his love. I crave his love. He needs my love. 

I guess each of us does what they need to do to get through the day. I used to think my job was enough, but now I know that it's not. I have found someone that I truly love with all my heart. Every night we make love and then sleep beside one another, held together tight in embrace, never wanting to let go.

I hold him, protecting him from all those that have come before and tried to hurt him. I will never let go of him. Darien needs someone to love him and I have accepted the challenge. It's not hard to love him. Besides his good looks, his charm and his wit, there are so many hidden qualities that not many people get to see. His intelligence, his heart, his conscience, his love. Darien's love comes with a price. The price is seeing the person you love in pain. Whether it be from the QSM, the random injuries he seems to get everyday from working in the field, or the emotional pain that he constantly puts himself through, Darien lives in a world of pain. I guess all I can do is try to ease it. To be his Band-Aid. I will do my best to protect him, not because of Kevin, not because it is the right thing to do, but because I love him.

Claire closed the diary and set the pen down. She looked over at Darien and leaned down, kissing him on the lips. He moaned gently. She reached over and shut off the light. Then she scooted towards him, putting one hand over his stomach and the other at the top of his head. She stoked his hair gently for a few minutes and then laid her head down in the crook of his shoulder. She fell asleep a few seconds later, her arm securely around his middle, ready to protect her prince charming from all of the misery in the world.

That's All Folks


End file.
